You may have heard the story about Jadav Payeng who was called The Forest Man, whose legacy was to plant a tree every day for 37 years becoming a beautiful oasis. An amazing story and living embodiment of the philosophy that one person can make a difference. The Starfish story is another, this one was based on the purpose of my business – working together to make a difference, where a young girl was throwing one starfish at a time back into the sea before the sun came up having been washed up on the shore due a storm the previous night. There are many inspirational stories like these, however, there are many more that go unnoticed where people do wonderful things for others and their communities every day that never seem to get noticed or be remembered for that. For example did you know what Alfred B Nobel was
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Are you a creator or breaker of habits?Do you have bad habits you want to be rid of?Do you have good habits you wish you had more of? Maybe the focus of how you’ve been trying to change your habits needs to be different. We seem to attract, develop and embed bad habits all the time and so very easily. And yet the good habits or positive and healthy habits we want to adopt, we don’t seem to be able to incorporate into our daily lives. Isn’t this just so aggravating? Maybe a different approach would be easier. If we instead, stopped focusing on what we want to stop or do less of, and instead focus on what we want to start, wouldn’t that be a more positive approach? Perhaps you could consider the ONE small habit you would like to introduce to your day. This new habit needs to
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I think we all know that being determined will provide us with the greatest outcomes, don’t we? Then why aren’t we determined all the time? Sometimes our resolve is low, our willpower got up and walked away and we end up focusing on our weaknesses and what we can’t do, rather than what we should be doing. If we don’t have a purpose; a clear reason or focus for our goal, we are unlikely to feel determined at all, rather, we often go in the other direction and do nothing or something that’s not going to help us achieve anything helpful. We also know that to have a clear focus on what we want to do; have our eye on the ball at all times, however, sometimes we just don’t feel motivated to do what we know we should be doing. Our concentration often diminishes, our determination drops, we feel
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Are you one of those people who try to everything yourself? Do you often pretend everything is fine when it isn’t? It IS okay to sometimes feel frustrated or angry, remember these feelings acts as ‘wellbeing barometer’. If we try, we can take the pressure off ourselves, particularly if we feel the pressure starting to build up. But first we do need to acknowledge to ourselves if things aren’t right and consider how best we can help ourselves. If you’re feeling ‘under the pump’ and pressured with how things are either at home, work or with the current environment, here are some tips you might want to consider. Making time and space to reflect on thingsIf possible, try to resist negative talk or negativityWork on talking positively, even if you don’t feel it, it can really helpIgnoring feelings you don’t like may hinder problem solvingWe need to try acknowledging our
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We do need to be mindful of our own mental health and support our wellbeing. Isn’t it times like these when we need to make sure we are looking after ourselves, as well as our family, friends and colleagues? Not forgetting if in business we also need to take care of our business family. When we are at our best personally, we are positive and healthy with normal changes of mood, pretty sociable and active, sleeping well and feeling calm. At work we are able to concentrate easily and focus on our tasks, have fairly high work standards, and are mostly solution-focused. We are aware of those warning signs of ‘not being okay’ and have a good work / life balance. Sometimes, when our wellbeing isn’t so good and we’re feeling a little stressed, at home we might become irritable, perhaps anxious and our energy starts to drop. Whereas in
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It’s times like these when we struggle with not being able to do what we want. Travel overseas, visit friends and family far away. We might not be able to take a proper holiday, however, we could take a ‘mental holiday’! Find yourself somewhere quiet and comfortable to sit and relax and shut your eyes and start picturing yourself beginning your holiday. This might start from the planning of the holiday or the day you’re packing to leave, really feeling that excitement of your forthcoming journey. Then imagine you’ve arrived at your destination. This might be somewhere hot with blue skies, crystal blue seas and white sands with your ‘villa’ overlooking tranquil views. For some, this might be a hard exercise to do, trying to let our imagination take us somewhere, but stay with it. When you succeed it’s one of the most relaxing exercises you can do. You might
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Self-care is about how we care for our whole self, our wellbeing, which includes our emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual health. Self-care replenishes and renews our health and wellbeing. Self-care is about doing something for you, only you, to help with your overall health and wellness. How we self-care is different for everyone; we have to find our best way to care for ourselves as one size doesn’t fit all. Tips for Self-Care:Creating a time in the day everyday – creating a self-care routine enables us to prioritise us, ensuring we have time to chill, relax, unwind, re-energise, do things that give and bring us joy Everyday journaling – the key to self-care is to start with one specific activity and that’s the act of writing down our thoughts, feelings, activities, achievements, anticipated goals or actions for us 2. Top and Tail journaling – there are various schools of thoughts
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It may not surprise your that your goals are there to inspire you and not to make your feel like they are a chore. If our goals are there to inspire us then why do so many people set goals and not achieve them, or for some don’t even write down goals or set them as they know (or believe) they won’t achieve them so what’s the point! Goals are about creating action; positive action that will help us with our personal and professional development, take us outside our comfort zone, stretching us to achieve more to become a better person or better at what we do. Achieving goals or trying to achieve goals are fraught with so many obstacles and barriers that can feel so overwhelming, we either don’t know where to start or even how to start. We want to but just can’t get ourselves into ‘gear’ to
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Have you ever thought that our mind is just like an iceberg in that it consists of two parts, with the tip of the iceberg being the conscious mind which takes care of our daily decision-making, as well as dealing with all new situations, whereas the subconscious mind makes up the submerged part of the iceberg (the largest portion), which helps us deals with our learned behaviour. This is helpful for us to deal with situations that reoccur as we are using information already stored in our minds. This is why when we come to do a task again our mind remembers how we behaved last time, so if it’s a bad experience e.g. we got hurt, then we will remember that hurt or if it’s a task we do regularly then our mind forms that mental picture giving us the ability of recall. Everything that happens to us sits
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You only have one life – are you living this the way you want? Are you able to truthfully state what you want from your life?Do you have a clear-cut master plan to achieve what you want from your life?Does this master plan precisely determine when you will achieve what you want from your life? These are some questions I might ask clients to help them with their thinking around where they’re at, where they want to be, as well as why and determine how they might consider getting there. Can we honestly say we take ‘time out’ to consider this? Usually we are too busy aren’t we, however, if we did pause for a small period of time to consider what challenges or obstacles lay ahead and what we might need in terms of help, support, advice, guidance to motivate and inspire us to start, continue and complete, wouldn’t
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